New storm within the Government. Yolanda Díaz, second vice president and leader of United We Can in the Council of Ministers, has requested the “urgent” call of the Monitoring Commission of the coalition with the PSOE to deal with the increase in defense spending promised by Pedro Sánchez before NATO, and to which the purples are opposed frontally.
“There is concern”, admitted the also Minister of Labor after remarking that United We Can was not informed that the Council of Ministers would approve this Tuesday a credit of 1,000 million euros destined for the Ministry of Defense with which the Government lays the first stone of its commitment to reach 2% of GDP in military matters in 2029. In fact, Díaz has specified that she herself learned of the approval of this package through the press.
An extreme that La Moncloa categorically denies when asserting that all the ministerial departments were aware of the measure, which was addressed at the last meeting of the General Commission of Secretaries of State and Undersecretaries that was held last week. No ministers objected then. Now, Díaz asks to convene the state monitoring table of the government coalition to deal with the matter “serenely.”
It also requires that the opposition be aware of this increase through the Cortes. However, the credit comes from the contingency fund and, therefore, does not require validation by Congress, which is why Sánchez thus manages to avoid a parliamentary vote on an issue that provokes the rejection of the governance partners of La Moncloa, since, as they fear in the ranks of Podemos, all the left that configures the investiture bloc is “against” this rise.
In any case, Díaz rules out breaking the coalition with the PSOE and has promised to continue taking care of the alliance because, he considered, “there is no alternative.” Of course, no one in the purple universe dares to specify that he will make United We Can if finally an increase in defense spending is included in the next General State Budgets.
Meanwhile, the minority member of the government coalition increases the pressure on the president and demands that his people “push” so that in the public accounts of 2023 the social measures stand out much more than the militaristic ones.
It is not the first time that internal tensions force this meeting to be convened, but it is the first time that Diaz herself has demanded it, who on this occasion has collided directly with Defense Minister Margarita Robles.
This Monday, the socialist responded to purple criticism by questioning whether Díaz would be willing to stop manufacturing military frigates at the Navantia plant in her native Ferrol. A comment that the second vice president did not like at all, who at the end of this Monday denied Robles by breaking down the fine print of the billion credit, which will be used for ordinary spending, weapons and protection material for the Spanish troops, and not to finance new ships in the plants of Ferrol or Cádiz of Navantia.
In any case, Díaz assures that he was not aware of this measure but he did know of its content. As this newspaper has learned, his team did not receive official confirmation that the package would be approved this Tuesday by the Council of Ministers until 8:00 p.m. on Monday, when the purples were simply aware of the measure through the press.
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